He lived on charity; they told him that every day. The musician had bought him of his mother for fifty rubles, as Lensky afterward learned, as a speculation, in order to make money out of him as a prodigy. The time which he did not devote to his musical practice he must spend helping the maid in the kitchen.
He slept, with an old sofa pillow under his head, on the floor, in a gloomy little room, without window, only with dirty panes of glass in the door--a room in which the cook put all kinds of rubbish. Dampness ran down the walls, and every evening from all corners crept out a whole regiment of black beetles, and spread themselves over the boards. The food? Well, it was sparing. Sometimes he only received what the family had left on their plates.
Was he not angry at this treatment? No. He found it quite in order at that time. The well-fed, warmly dressed people impressed him, especially the cap of Vauvara Ivanovna--that was the name of his mistress. He felt a respectful shudder pass over him every time he saw this structure of blonde, red flowers, and green ribbon. Except the Kremlin, nothing impressed him so much as this house.
When the whole family, in festival attire, went to church on Sunday, he stood at the door, quite oppressed by the feeling of modest wonder, and looked after the well-dressed, well-fed people. He did his best to make himself useful and agreeable, and to please them. Yes, he was just so small and pitiable, as a half-starved six-year-old pigmy. And then, in conclusion, one day he simply could bear it no longer and ran back to his mother. He found the way. With that quite animal sense of locality and traces, which only children of the lowest classes of men have, he found it. His mother was at home; she was frightened when she saw him. Had they turned him out? Yes, she was frightened. In the first moment she was frightened; then--here Lensky stammered in his confession--naturally she was glad; for, what use of losing words?--naturally she was glad. How she kissed him and caressed him with her poor, rough, toil-worn, and still such gentle, warm hands. He still felt her hands sometimes on him, in dreams, especially behind his ears and on his neck. Then she fed him. She spread a red and white flowered cloth over the table in his honor, and after that she gave him a holy picture. Then she said it could not be otherwise; he must go back to Simon Ephremitsch; it was for his own good. When he had become a great artist, then he would come to fetch her in a coach with four horses.
That impressed him. And in order to calm him completely, she promised to visit him very soon.
But she did not come; and when he ran back to her, after about a month, she was no longer in her old abode; he never found her! Soon afterward she sent him two pretty little shirts, delicately embroidered in red and blue. But she herself did not come. Never!
At his first appearance in public--he had performed his piece with the anxious assiduity of a little monkey that fears a blow, he asserted--to his great astonishment, he was applauded. In the midst of the hand-clapping he suddenly heard a sob. He was convinced that his mother had been at the concert.
At the conclusion they handed him a laurel wreath, the same which now hung in his room; quite a poor woman had brought it, they said. He guessed immediately that the wreath came from his mother; and suddenly, just as a couple of music-lovers had stepped on the stage, in order to see the wonderful little animal near by, he began to stamp his feet and clench his fists, to scream and to sob, until every one crowded around him. His principal threatened him with blows; a very pretty young lady in a blue-silk dress took him on her lap to quiet him; but all was of no use.
He saw his mother once more--in her coffin.
His benefactor told him that she was dead, and that, after all, it was suitable that he should show her the last honors. The coffin stood on a table, surrounded by thin, poorly-burning candles, and she lay within, so small and thin, her hands folded on her breast, in a poor shroud, that they had bought ready made for a few copecks.